As a number of corporate law scholars and I argued in an amicus brief in the case, the very purpose of the corporate form is to separate the shareholders from the corporate entity. A distinction between shareholders and the company lies at the very foundation of corporate law. The condition that there be such a distinction is not an add-on; it goes to the definitional nature of the government benefit itself. Hobby Lobby’s presumption that shareholders can be seen as distinct from the company for purposes of, say, limited liability, but identified with the company for purposes of religious freedom changes the nature of the government benefit itself.

In other words, the Court has changed, definitionally, what it means to be a corporation under the state laws in question.

About Me

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who has been teaching most recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the New School for Social Research, He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2015-2016 and a Research Associate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College.
(Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.)